EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Legislation, Lithuania, Real Estate

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the state should pay the market price for the nine acres of land that used to belong to the applicant's father before World War II, however, the land was unlawfully sold to another person in 2001. However, the court did not put the state under the obligation of paying the market price for all of the land the property rights are yet to be restored to.

After Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, Alfonsas Vytautas Paukstis, 78, turned to state institutions for recovery of nearly 2 hectares of land purchased by his father in 1930s and nationalized in 1960s.

Regardless of the man's requests, the Vilnius county sold the 9 are plot of the land at issue to another person, a move later described as unlawful by the Seimas ombudsman, the National Land Service and prosecutors.

The Strasbourg court ruled it could not “turn a blind eye to the fact” that the 2003 market value of the plot was 46,900 euros, while the Vilnius man was offered merely 5,200 euros for the entire plot under then methodology.

The court dismissed this as "plainly incommensurable," ruling that Lithuania had violated the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights on protection of property and ordering the state to pay 46,900 euros in pecuniary damages, 6,500 in respect of non-pecuniary damage and 575 euros in court expenses.

The court did not satisfy the claim to get a compensation of market value for the remaining land.

According to the ruling, the convention does not automatically guarantee the right to property restitution and does not create a general obligation to "restore rights to property which had been expropriated before they ratified the Convention."